These Are the Best and Worst Countries to Be a Woman in 2018

The Global Gender Gap is currently 68%.

The results for this year’s best and worst countries to be a woman are in.

Iceland is the world’s most gender-equal country for the 10th year in a row, and Yemen is the world’s least, according to a new report from the World Economic Forum.

In the annual report titled “The Global Gender Gap Report 2018,” researchers measured the discrepancies between women and men across 149 countries in four categories: economic opportunity, political empowerment, education options, health, and survival.

Iceland’s spot on the list doesn’t come as a surprise. In January, the country made the gender pay gap illegal and is known for enforcing many laws that protect women, from strict corporate board inclusion guidelines to generous parental leave.

Despite women’s rights improvements in various countries, at the current rate “it will take 108 years to close the gender gap across politics, work, health and education, and 202 years to close the workplace gender gap,” the report said.

The three-year civil war in Yemen has hit women dramatically, leaving 2.9 women and children severely malnourished. Women have had to step into roles that have traditionally been filled by men because so many men have become war casualties, but they’re still not being treated equally.

More than 3 million Yemeni women and girls are also at risk of gender-based violence. There are 60,000 women are at risk of sexual violence, according to UNFPA, with child marriage playing a huge part — there’s no age limit to define rape in marriage.

But the World Economic Forum’s new report isn’t meant for pointing fingers. Every country could be doing a better job to promote gender equality.

The Global Gender Gap is currently 68%, which means there is still a 32% gap to close, according to the World Economic Forum. No country has achieved gender equality and only the top seven countries have closed at least 80% of the gap.

“Although progress continues to proceed at a very slow pace,” the report said, “and despite significant heterogeneity across countries’ performances, the fact that most countries are moving toward greater gender parity is encouraging and rewards the efforts of all policy-makers and practitioners across the world that work to achieve the UN’s fifth Sustainable Development Goal: gender equality.”

Hidden Tears Project

Hidden Tears is a media company that partners with non-profits across the country to raise consciousness through media on gender inequality, sexual abuse, and human trafficking, all of which are intrinsically connected.